King of sports games

You seriously have to pity those poor people at Electronic Arts.

Madden 11
For: PlayStation 3
From: EA Sports

Oh sure, the company makes like a trillion dollars a quarter and it holds exclusive licences and it has a near-monopoly on dozens of sports games.

But it has also created two franchise beasts that take an awful lot of feeding every year.

Two franchises that, while they have become bywords for excellence, soak up an awful lot of resources and come under the hammer if they fail to appease the bloodthirsty gaming public.

I speak of Fifa (football) and Madden (er, also football), of course.

Fifa 11, the 18th iteration of the remarkable roundball series, will be released in late September, and we will see if there is any way it can possibly improve on Fifa 10.

For now, the sports gaming world is besotted with Madden 11, the 26th edition of the American football franchise.

Long considered the king of sports games, Madden comes out every year - because it makes money, and because gamers want updated rosters - and every year the same question gets asked: "Is it worth getting, if you've already got Madden 08/09/10?"EA Sports is well used to this insatiable desire for something new every year, and to its credit it has tried hard for years to bundle a nugget of goodness with every new game.

New to Madden 11 are a handful of tweaks, changes and features that add up to a pretty good reason to put Madden 10 back on the shelf.

The most significant, or at least the most vigorously promoted, addition is something called Gameflow, which could be subtitled "Football For Dummies".

It's basically an automatic playcalling setting.

So a virtual coach chooses the play for you - for the uninitiated, gridiron uses a very structured offensive scheme built around various run and pass plays - and you hear his voice and try to follow his suggestions.

The real trainspotters can still scroll through the myriad formations and plays and routes and go it alone.

But Gameflow adds real value, even to those of us who have played Madden quite a bit.

On the field, the game has made another big change with the ditching of the turbo button.

So no more comically unrealistic sprinting through and around eight defenders.

Players who are quicker in real life run quickly, simple as that.

The gameplay, as always, is remarkably good.

I have no idea what it feels like to be a running back, or to be a quarterback dropping back to pass under pressure, or to be a 150kg black man in tight white pants, but Madden 11 gives me a fair idea.

There is a new kick meter (don't get too excited), the return of Ultimate Team and Madden Moments, and a new online mode where you play with two friends, each of you controlling a group of players.

To an extent, EA has reached a point where it can't really fail, with Madden or with Fifa.

Will there come a day when absolutely no more juice can be squeezed out of the golden goose? Possibly.

But that day has not come.

Oh, and if you are wondering about the cover, that's Drew Brees, the quarterback who led the New Orleans Saints to a Super Bowl earlier this year.

Tradition - the infamous Madden Curse - dictates he will get injured this season.